The Concept Of Losing Sanity
by TotoroBird
Summary: (or how Liesel ends up walking fully clothed into the river.)


**A/N: So I'm back apparently. I bet you thought you'd gotten rid of me, but for some reason, I can't get away from this damn book and it's characters, so I guess you'll have to put up with me for a little while longer. Sorry.**

 **I'm not sure if it will be long or of any good quality, we'll just see how it goes. Enjoy.**

 **All characters belong to Markus Zusak, in case anyone was in the mood for a good lawsuit (who isn't really?)**

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She can't really remember when exactly she walked into the river.

Then again, Liesel can't really remember that much.

Somewhere in the distorted, slowly rusting joints of her mind - the remote corner that hadn't shut down completely - she knew there was a point to this; a point in which it had made perfect sense to stumble into the thick, heavy water as it shoved past towards the soft, afternoon light. But whatever reason she may or may not have had held tightly in her bruised and burnt fingers, it had been swallowed by the river a while ago. Hours, maybe days. Maybe she had always been here: half eaten by river, half eaten by sky, and whatever left eaten by grief. Because she couldn't remember when.

Or why. She couldn't remember why either.

It's very cold. Deceptively cold. The sky is sweet and silent and pretty, stained with silver clouds and pale blue and ashen sunlight spilling down. But the water is grappling and raw and _oh_ , so very cold. She's shivering, freezing inch by inch from the waist down while the sun drips across her cheeks. Drips from her eyes. And drips.

It won't stop.

The feeling of completely out of balance - one side ice and another warmth - was not uncommon. Not for her at any rate. The phrase only just brushed the skin, failing to dig deeper underneath, where the grieving and the devastation and the pain rolled and balled silently in her veins. Where the sky for one spectacularly horrific moment in time had been stained deep red, and houses crumbled to bones. Out of balance didn't quite describe it.

The girl had been found somewhere in the sea of ash, fingers held tight around what looked like an old, beaten accordion, wailing. The sounds she made were raw and heartbroken, stripped down to the core by the silence that engulfed. A man and a woman lay sleeping beside her as she cried, but they did not wake up to hush her strangled screams. Her face was buried in her Papa's side, nails digging into the cracked keys of the accordion, and she wept for the soft, silver eyes she would never see again.

It had been a few days since then (she thinks), but the minutes pass like years, scratching across her skin and chewing away at each long, drawn out heartbeat. Time stopped existing a while ago, melting away and baring a world caught in limbo. In the achingly long, empty stretches of night - in between disturbing and acidic nightmares - she can't quite work out what's more terrifying: the sudden, gaping loss that threatens to eat her whole, or the ever impending knowledge that there is an entire, infinite lifetime left for her to live through. Both keep her awake.

They're dead.

That much sticks. That much she remembers.

Her second parents. Her best friend. They're all dead.

A moment, she thinks, or maybe a lifetime ago, she was somewhere else. A little overgrown cemetery by the edge of town, scattered with concrete people and concrete hearts that should have stopped beating a while ago. Her's hasn't stopped - that traitorous, bastard heart that keeps her living still - lurching and cracking and straining at every dream that clings too close. She sort of wishes it had stopped. That's what she waits for. The wonderful, liberating moment when she can finally die.

The sunlight is still dripping from her eyes.

The graves bore no names. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn't find the letters that made up the names she loved so dearly. They weren't there. The words had disappeared off into the sky, leaving the stone empty. No one else seems to notice. And no one notices when she too disappears.

The girl doesn't really know where she's headed (that's a lie, she knows _exactly_ where she's headed, she just doesn't have to think about it). It becomes familiar quickly, and her body leads her forward as if she were a machine, creaking joints and rusted motor but still moving, still going. Her eyes may as well be closed, and she'd still find her way there relatively unharmed.

The sound of water leaks in. There's a river, and a bridge, and the far away noises of youth, swallowed by the water. She stands on the bridge, watching the sky drift by on a cracked, glass-like surface. There's something there in the water: square and dark and wet. She knows what it is before she even looks.

And she knows who's going to retrieve it.

From the edges of her peripheral vision, she can already see the figure rushing towards the river, throwing his winter coat off, stumbling in. Her feet begin to break into a run, and she reaches the bank just as she hears the familiar crash of water.

She stands on the shore, watching the book she once treasured over all else float past in the water. She watches her best friend, face set in concentration as he wades deeper and deeper into the abyss. She watches the familiar lemon-coloured head submerge to catch it in cold, trembling fingers. And she waits.

She waits for him to reappear, holding the drenched mound of paper and cardboard in his shaking fist, the triumphant, glorious grin on his face. For the 'How about a kiss, saumensch?' and the hope stinging in his childish, German eyes. And for the moment that she'll finally give in to him and give him that damn kiss he's been longing for. Because she wants to. Finally, she wants to.

She waits. He doesn't come back up.

 _Shit._

Her feet are swallowed by grey water, rapidly clawing up her legs to her knees, to her waist.

Maybe she walked into the river to retrieve the damn book herself, because someone has to retrieve it. Maybe she went in to retrieve her sodden best friend, because it's the middle of December and he'll _die_ if she doesn't go and get him. Or maybe there was another reason entirely.

Either way, she walks in, beaten and shoved by the aggressive rolls of cold water, until she's waist deep. The book isn't there. Her best friend certainly isn't there. And the last scraps of logic left in her head float away in the rippling, Autumn sunshine.

 _Wait. Since when was December in the middle of Autumn?_

The hours slide past her, shuffling around her bony, trembling frame and onward to the horizon, but she doesn't move. She can't. She needs to find him. Her fingers are clenched into fists, gripping the thought of her best friend close to her so that he doesn't end up drifting away too.

The shattering of the river as he re-emerged. The wild abandon in his eyes as he grinned up at her from the water, holding the book high in the air so there would be no doubt to anyone that he was victorious. The breathless, trembling, watery movements of his limbs as he staggered back towards her. The overwhelming, relief-stained urge to punch him in the face for being so damn _stupid_ , and the almost violent desire to kiss him, because he was just _that_ stupid, and she wanted to. She wanted to.

She didn't though.

His lips had been so cold, so vulnerable, cracked and blistered with heat and ash. He didn't taste like river, icy and shaky and glorious. He didn't taste like apples, snatched by reckless fingers in the summer. He didn't taste like rebellion, like fierce, tumbling hatred for the Führer. He didn't taste like the dark, the flicker of the lantern as he laid there on the shop floor with tears in his eyes for his father, a Merry Christmas, saukerl hanging in the air.

Rudy Steiner hadn't tasted of Rudy Steiner. He had tasted of _her_ \- her trembling, laboured breaths and her sticky, salty tears as she stole a kiss from his broken, silent lips. He had tasted of her.

Whatever was once Rudy Steiner was lost. Somewhere in the river, she thinks. They were always going to end up here.

'Rudy,' she murmurs, and the word sounds so foreign on her tongue. So strange and empty. 'Rudy,' she says again, louder, trying to fit it to a face, to validate it's meaning.

'You called?'

The voice sounds beside her, somewhere among the rippling water, and she _knows_ it. She knows it too well because it's _his_.

She smiles wryly, and her face cracks from the effort. 'So you finally decided to join me?' Her voice is flat and steady, and she doesn't turn her head to look at him.

'You looked pretty lonely by yourself in the river.' A pause. 'Speaking of which, is there a reason you're stood in the river or is this just a new hobby you've picked up?'

'Well you know, sometimes stealing books just isn't enough and I have the urge to stand waist deep in freezing water,' she replied.

She hears him grin. 'Good to know that the book thief is expanding her horizons.'

A cracked, bitter laugh falls from her teeth, scattering against the water. 'I wish.'

There's a soft silence, and she can't tell if she's alone or not anymore. The sound of the river lilts through her veins, making her shiver. 'Rudy?' Her voice comes out hopefully, almost desperately, quiet and afraid.

'Still here.'

She shuts her eyes in an indistinguishable mix of irritation and relief, clinging to sound of his voice before it slides through her fingers like the water. 'Damn it Rudy, for once can you not stay silent?'

'Now there's a question I'd never thought you'd ask.'

She lets a chuckle escape her cracked, bitten lips. 'Its finally happened, hasn't it,' she states flatly. 'I'm insane, aren't I.' It's not a question. It never was.

'Probably,' he says, and she can hear the shrug of his bony shoulders.

She takes a deep breath, then slowly exhales. 'You're in my head. You're not actually here.'

'I hope so, being a ghost sounds like a shit experience.'

A genuine laugh spills from her, and her lungs ache and rattle. 'Good to know your priorities are still in order.'

'I knew you always wanted me for my priorities.'

'It was the basis of our whole friendship.'

He grins again, and she can see it in her head. That stupid, reckless grin. 'One hell of a friendship.'

She smiles contentedly, for the first time in thousands of years, as this strange, sweet madness corrodes her thoughts. 'But you're still not here,' she murmurs, watching the water slide by. 'You're not real.'

There's a soft, sad sigh. 'You could look and see.'

Her fingers tighten and her head shakes mechanically. 'No,' she mumbles. 'No, I can't.'

'It will answer your question.' His voice is quiet: a rare occurrence, admittedly. It that same voice she heard on the day she had found Max in the parade of Jews; the one that he had murmured into her hair over and over again as she struggled and cried on the pavement.

Again, her head shakes, and she bites down on sudden wave of grief that rises up in her throat. 'I already know the answer,' she chokes out. 'I know. And as soon as I look at you, you won't be there.' She takes another deep breath, and her bones shake, but it's not from the cold anymore.

'Just-' her eyes shut and she steadies herself, 'Just don't go yet.' The words are shoved out through trembling lips, and all her willpower is spent on keeping herself from crumbling in on herself and weeping. But she stays standing, staring ahead as the sunlight drips from her eyes.

There's a pause, and she swears she can feel the skin cracking, her resolve falling, her fingers tightening on nothing. Then,

'I'm not going anywhere.'

An unfamiliar swell of relief soothes her uneven breathing. 'Thank you,' she says quietly. 'Thank you.'

Another pause. 'If it's any consolation, I never meant to die.'

The laughter rips from her throat before she can stop it, and it's dark and acidic and cold. 'Its not.'

'I didn't think it would be,' he says.

'Then why say it?' she spits out, 'Why say stupid things like that?'

His sheepish grin is there, in her head. She can see it. 'Because when have I ever come out with anything remotely smart?'

For some strange, painful reason, she's grinning too. It hurts. 'Bastard.'

She's quiet for a moment, letting the silence soak in. The sunlight streams across her shoulders, the back of her neck, and she can't feel her feet anymore, if she ever could. Maybe she's dying. The thought is a preposterous, transparent excuse for hope that she reaches for as greedily as a book but it's far away. Everything is far away.

'I did love you.' It doesn't occur to her who says it until she hears her own voice wrapped around the words. And she can't stop. 'I really, really did.'

There's silence. Only the steady sound of his breathing, and the water.

'Liesel.' It's just her name. Nursed on his tongue like one of those penny sweets they used to starve for. She's heard him say it in a thousand different ways over the years, a thousand different emotions and experiences that he once knew. But the soft, wistful word catches her off guard, sad and hopeful and defeated.

The sobs rise up in her throat but she forces herself on. 'I never kissed you. I never kissed you, and I should have done because you _deserved_ it.' She inhales and exhales slowly, 'Oh Rudy, you deserved it so much.'

'Liesel,' he says again, and she can hear the tremor in his voice.

'You were no help. You never asked again,' she murmurs, and her lips twist into a bitter smile. 'But I guess that doesn't really matter anymore.'

There's a stretch of flat silence. Her insides are slowly unravelling, she's gripping her sanity as it drips through her fingers, and her tongue is heavy with words she still hasn't said, has yet to say, will never get to say.

The words graze across her face, but she can't say she wasn't expecting them. They are worn and dusty from disuse, battered from rejection and stained with Himmel Street bones. But they are achingly familiar. Very much _his_.

'How about a kiss saumensch?'

Then there's warmth on her cheek, something soft and light and barely there but it is _there_. She knows it's there. She can feel his steady, measured breaths against her skin, followed by his mouth, as he presses a kiss to the side of her face. Her eyes fall shut, and her breathing slows, and she tries not to cry as he kisses her cheek again.

'Stupid saukerl,' she mutters, and she feels his laugh somewhere against her ear. Her fingers reach out for him, to catch a limb, a neck, something. But her hand meets nothing.

 _Not yet._

The warmth disappears, he pulls away, and she can't tell the difference between his breathing and the sound of the water.

 _Please not yet_.

Her head turns and her eyes open, and she looks around desperately for her best friend, but there's only the river, and the bridge, and the sky. And her. There was only ever her.

The sunlight is warm on her face, the breeze grazes her cheek and the water breathes beneath her. Half eaten by cold, half eaten by warmth, and whatever left eaten by grief.

'You bastard,' it comes out in a devastated, exhausted whisper, 'why did you wait that long?' She sinks into the water, letting herself be swallowed by the stumbling, rushing oblivion, blocking out the traitorous daylight.

 _Why did I wait that long._

It's not really a goodbye if no one hears it, but she lets the word birth from her throat underneath the water, the sounds constructed from glass beads of oxygen and distorted silence. The one she wasn't brave enough to lay on the earth above his grave. The one he'll never hear.

And she cries.

 ***A Small, Insignificant Fact***

 **There was a rumour that late in the day, a girl walked into the river fully clothed and said something very strange.**

 **Something about a kiss.**

 **Something about a saumensch.**

 **How many times did she have to say goodbye?**

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 **A/N: The final extract is from the actual book and is literally what this whole idea for a story came from. It does not belong to me.**

 **Thank you for reading, despite the fact that this made extremely little sense and I just lost the will to even try and maintain Zusak's style because it's late at night, and I don't do sleep deprivation well.**

 **Also, I have been going through a phase of looking at my past stories and hating them profusely, and I'm planning to delete a few. If there are any that anyone desperately wants to keep, or would not want me to delete, let me know.**

 **Thanks again.**


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